THE OCTOBER GIRL VOL. 2
written and illustrated by Matthew Dow Smith
A teenage girl with newly discovered magical powers must keep her own father from destroying her community in Smith’s YA graphic novel.
Teenage Autumn hovers over the town. Once an ordinary girl, she’s now able to fly, talk to animals, and occasionally glow. She is one of the Night Folk, a secret community of supernatural creatures, but she also has typical teenage problems: Autumn struggles with math, works at a coffee shop, and resents her father for abandoning her family. (“My dad’s only magic power is disappearing.”) One day, she’s convinced that she’s spotted her father. Autumn is talking this over with her friend Evan when the man she thinks is her father stumbles into the bookstore where Evan works. They take the man to Evan’s apartment and put him to bed; he begins to levitate. While Autumn is out fetching her grandfather, the October King, her father, Tom, attacks her mother and runs off again. Autumn, Evan, and a supporting cast of supernatural characters work together to find out what happened to Tom and how they can stop him from harming others. Tom seems to have become something of a conspiracy theorist, but he may also be possessed by something called The Dark. Autumn learns that someone she considered a friend is also a part of this world, and she begins to doubt whether she can trust anyone. There’s a bit of adolescent angst to contend with, too. One note that pervades the narrative is a yearning that many YA readers teenagers will recognize—more than anything, Autumn wants her life to be how it was before she discovered the Night People existed, like a teenager uncomfortable with confronting the adult world and wanting to return to a more innocent time. This is the second book in a series, and readers will benefit from reading the first installment, as too much context is missing in the second novel for it to completely succeed as a stand-alone. But Smith’s art is lovely, the story moves along quickly, and the book has a compelling sense of suspense.
An exciting and emotional supernatural story.